Beverage products are a category of products intended for human consumption, typically by drinking. Beverage products are commonly placed into some type of primary packaging for distribution and sale. Primary packaging can include any of various container types. Examples include bottles formed from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), HDPE (high density polyethylene) or other plastics, glass bottles, aluminum bottles, cans, etc. Primary packaging may have a wide range of sizes and shapes, even for a single type of product.
Systems for filling primary packaging containers with a beverage product generally include a filling valve that starts and stops a flow of the product into a container that is being filled. The filling valve is usually connected to a tank or other type of reservoir that holds a larger quantity of the beverage product in question. The manner of filling a container varies for different types of beverage products. For some types of beverage products, a container may be cold filled. In a cold fill process, product is dispensed into a container while that product is in a chilled or room temperature state. For some types of beverage products, containers are warm filled or hot filled. In these types of filling processes, product is dispensed into a container while that product is in a heated state. Still other types of beverage products must be placed into a sterile container under sterile conditions, a process known as aseptic filling.
Current systems for filling primary packaging containers with beverage products are designed to handle a narrow range of product types and filling scenarios. For example, most filling systems are designed for only one of cold filling, warm/hot filling, extended shelf life filling, high acid aseptic filling or low acid aseptic filling. As another example, available filling systems are designed to fill containers with products that are in a fairly narrow range of viscosities. Conventional systems are also limited with regard to the type, size and concentration of inclusions that may be present in a product. When filling containers with product that is not of low viscosity (e.g., if product viscosity is above approximately 20 centipoise) or that contains inclusions, many such conventional systems must also operate at substantially reduced speeds.
These limitations severely restrict the product space that can be successfully packaged with a single filling system. This in turn limits flexibility and usefulness of expensive production facilities. If product volumes drop significantly or if a product type is no longer required, it can be expensive and time consuming to convert to equipment usable for filling containers with a different type of beverage product. Manufacturers of beverage filling systems prefer to offer several filling systems to a plant in order to fill a wide range of products (i.e., provide multiple beverage filling platforms) instead of offering a single filler that can handle a wide range of products.